The mapping service which was recently jointly acquired by Audi, BMW and Daimler revealed their newest product, the HD Live Map at the CES in Las Vegas.
According to HERE, the HD Live Map is the “world’s most advanced cloud-based map asset commercially available for vehicles today”. This means that the new cloud-mapping service is readily available for connected cars in North America and Western Europe right now.

One of the great features offered by the HD Live Map is that it allows the car to effectively see around corners as the service creates a highly detailed representation of the road ahead, enhancing functions of the vehicle like the adaptive cruise control, the adaptive headlights and curve speed warnings, as the service provides real-time accurate data that could not be received from the vehicle’s hardware.

“As we move towards higher levels of vehicle automation, drivers need to feel that their car is making the right decisions on their behalf,” said Floris van de Klashorst, VP Automotive at HERE. “When it comes to trusting your car, having consistent real-time awareness of road conditions near and far is absolutely critical. With HD Live Map serving this need, we believe it will become the car industry’s most intelligent vehicle sensor.”

The HD Live Map can also enhance automated driving functions of a car, by providing data such as lane level information, road construction zones, traffic, accidents and analytics data, including speed profile information that tells the vehicle how to drive based on actual human behavior data.

This is also the first self-updated map service as the HD Live Map will use the vehicle’s sensors to update its maps in near real-time. For example if the sensors of the car detect a speed limit sign that’s not consistent with the data currently on the map, the map will self-update in such fashion that other vehicles approaching the spot will have the new, correct information.

HERE has already been providing parts or even the full HD Live Map for autonomous driving testing to more than ten car companies.